The Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (“OHIM”) recently declared the invalidity of the registered Community trademark “instaweather” confirming the possible confusion between Instagram’s famous trademark and other signs which use the prefix “Insta” and the suffix “Gram”.

The “instaweather” trademark was filed in January 2013 for products in Class 9 (software), and it identifies an application that allows users to include weather information as tags on pictures, and then share those images on Instagram.

In its decision, the Office stated that the “instagram” and “instaweather” trademarks are similar when compared from a visual, aural and conceptual point of view. Moreover, the Office established that the “instagram” trademark enjoys a great reputation at the date on which the application for the “instaweather” trademark was filed by demonstrating that the app had millions of users and was considered one of the leaders in the field of social networks together with Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

In light of all of the above, the OHIM then declared the invalidity of the Instaweather trademark.